INSOMNIA: The Ark: Insomnia: The Ark [English fixes]

So, in general, while we are still waiting for future decisions on game destiny, I decided to do some research process, and create first iteration of “little fixes” for people to be able to feel more deeply this beautiful and unique atmosphere of Insomnia: The Ark.

Here you will find list (that will evolve based on new findings and players input) gathered from different sources (wiki, game, Steam/GOG and other forums) about different aspects of game, locks in game, what you need to keep, where something can be found, different facts/hints that I managed to find myself or gathered from other sources.

Of course this will be no full walkthrough guide, but only the most important information that will help you finish quests.

I hope there are still active players, and I will need your help in finding mistakes that I missed for some reason.

Please read this guide to the end, especially “Unified style” part, and maybe questions “why this change are here” will be answered automatically.

– finding any inconsistency left in characters names, locations, organizations, etc.
– any missed symbols “. , : ” ” and others
– any mistakes in words
– any possible mistakes in words or grammar that you think is not correct
– any other text and style related issues

*beside that, I am very interested in:
– location B-27 (pre- and after- main quest event);
– Rusty Arena location (with big number of russian texts) maybe I missed there something);
– Bea Kera faction quests path;
– any biography related dialogs that is not Tector one.

When you report any findings just send me a screenshot of this issue, or write part of dialog with mistake with location name and NPC name in comments.

Thank you 🙂

And in any case, I hope that this project will be somewhat of community one, with discussion, and decisions related to questionable parts will not be done by myself 🙂

So lets move on to the topic…

All styles, formatting, names, descriptions left intact in terms of content – this means no any mod creator personal added stuff. Only fixes, unification, translation, and better representation.

Changelog v0.1:

• fixed instances of incorrect NPC names that still was used in-game starting from alpha/beta;
• fixed visible (not closed, mistype) tags in dialogs, items descriptions, quests descriptions
  (for example: q>, g}|gender, <chair>, <lt>, /gt> and other instances);
• fixed gender choosing in dialogs;
  (even if we don’t received female character, I still corrected instances when game shows to us our gender defined words (buddy, lady, pal, girlfriend, bastard, b**ch) without deleting those parts of text code);
• fixed numerous style issues in dialogs, quests and items descriptions;
  (quotes, bold font, italics font, etc.);
• added workaround (dirty fixes) in cases of russian language in english version:
  – Tower of Dream (I and II tome) book description – fixed for now;
  – Lost knowledge quest (Утраченные знания) – fixed for now;
  – NPC dialogs that was on russian language – fixed for now (if I missed some, please report) (most notable zones is: Rusty Arena, parts of Bea Kera, B-27 pre and post main quests)
• unified names of ranks, shops, zones, organizations, and other named lore-based stuff across all game;
• fixed items descriptions that consisted alpha/beta text parts even if game has updated text for them;
• some little changes to interface descriptions of different status effects, and traits;
• corrected particular cases of loading screen texts to be more consistent with general style;
• updated quests description to be more precise with highlighting of actions you need to do;
• unified “under the game hood” formatting commonly used in latest patches
  (not visible to players, but still consistency and cleaner view are always good change);
• almost all kickstarter campaign backers names changed to more appropriate names based on visual and location (Ghetter, Skeleton, Corpse, Hunter, etc.). This change done for lore and atmosphere reasons (some are still missing, because to change something I must see it visually, and I was unable to find couple of names in game, and couple still waiting for their new names).

• more corrections to dialogs, names, descriptions, etc.;
• visual pass on quests and items descriptions to not look like a bunch of words
  (add paragraphs and indents);
• do texts in books from game actually look good and readable;
• finish testing of workarounds for russian language parts in english version
  (must be sure, that all work as intended and do not break anything in game logic);
• some NPC (for example Valk, Soman, Sylar has by default “Trade” interaction enabled with empty inventory, but must be enabled “smartdialog” interaction because they have text lines to say);
• finish battle with entity – “?” that has text on russian (Обезвредить), game texts gives us two options how to translate it: Pacify or Neutralize;
• finish battle with ДА and НЕТ when you try to fix weapons (must be YES and NO);
• change dirty fixes to true correct fixes with mapping to localized english texts that will be editable without any “dances with drums”;
• add separate version for translation mod but with names of backers preserved.
• hard work on this stuff and more hard to test:
  – Paintings quest (condition for quest to finish is set to 20 by devs, but its still not working, I need to play with conditions checks in quest logic;
  – Manifesto Distilate for Svar – replace Ozone Distilate in Talik dialogue (on Square of Glory) with Manifesto (conditions check is set by default to: need to be Tector, Jaeger, Ordinator or have Trader perk) and maybe add this bottle to his trading inventory (by default its recorded that he has it for trade, but its never spawn in his inventory, so need to check conditions and variables);
  – Nocturne quest that involve Vladek and piano fix (in Vulture Nest) – look for distance for Vladek interaction zone, need to be increased because now you must stand almost near him to be able to start dialog;
  – Drake D. quest. Fix misspelling in variable Somnia_Karma expression so finishing his quest will add +5 to Karma (your blue skeleton flashing);
  – look at steam achievements conditions and uncomment locked by devs (in 1.7 patch) connection to Steam services, so this must (I hope) allow us to get achievements again (all code are in place, for the first look, just disabled);
  – Grank in Rainbow-106 will sell you Bastard Snail for 200 coupons (booze for Dorb), but his dialog says he want for it 400 coupons (conditions variable for dialog says that it must be 200) – decide if 200 is enough for quest or raise it to 400 coupons as dialog line says;
  – Extra ticket quest. Woman says that she will give you 100 coupons when you complete it, but never give them. Need to decide if we need add condition for them (quest variable don’t say anything about money, but dialog line says something like this: “before woman try to give you coupons you see how she starting to disappear”, so its may be intentional to not give any money reward;
  – Check rakh quest in Wild Grove, different conditions are messed, that lead to messed dialogs from hunters. Quest have different possibilities:
  – Kill rakh alone;
  – Kill rakh with help of hunter (if you have Leadership perk);
  – Save rakh by unlocking (hacking) terminal behind her.
  – and who the hell this Filar NPC in Wild Grove (looks like leftover from earlier stages of development);
  – decide do we need to add condition for Cooling System blueprint removal or left it as is (blueprint will be in your inventory and Ditt do not remove it from your inventory when you complete this part);
• other stuff, depending on how hard game will beat me on the way of modding this godlike creation;
• fix russian version of game, when english version will be completed.

On to-do list for future other tasks:

• record all instances of locations resetting to create a help guide when to take all items (or just most important ones) from personal locker to not lose them and potentially lock yourself from completing some quests (because items will be lost); – sounds almost impossible, because its complete random (noticed that Vulture Nest reloaded when Morthy arrived to garage);
• test if we have possibility to move props around the map using only X/Y/Z coordinates via related map files;
• find a ways how we can edit Random events and do we have a possibility to make some one-time only, so we dont have broken scripts on those events;
• Thyper teammate. Why he don’t receive experience?;
• Look for missing dialogs of secondary NPC for last part of game (looks like, triggers to start those lines do not work).

For now its ONLY for english language. Version for russian language will be later.

1. Download file provided via link above
2. Navigate to your Insomnia: The Ark installation folder
3. From there navigate: Insomnia_V2\Content\Paks\
4. Copy mod file to this folder
5. Check that in Paks folder you have two files: Insomnia_v2-WindowsNoEditor and Insomnia_v2-WindowsNoEditor_p
6. Done, you can launch game

1. Navigate Insomnia_V2\Content\Paks\ folder
2. Remove Insomnia_v2-WindowsNoEditor_p file
3. Done, you can launch game

1. GOG version must work too, I don’t see any reasons why it can’t.
2. Mod is completely harmless to original game files, this means that you can install or delete mod in any part of your game (for now this is true, as I don’t find any issues with such process yet)
3. Mod work in way how Unreal Engine classify patch files: first game load game files and if there are newer files (in our case its mod files) then newer files will be loaded and not an original ones.

So again no any rewriting of existing game files, and you can be sure that you don’t need to re-download whole game if you delete this mod.

1. Collector quest:
here is difficult one, one of quest condition tied to in-game achievement that says about 20 pictures. Even if we viewed 20 or more, we still don’t get in-game achievement called “Art Connoisseur”, so for now I think that there can be two issues: or game do not count viewed pictures at all… or count but some trigger is broken so we don’t get achievement and in any of this two cases can’t finish quest (as I write above, when we speak with NPC giver to be able to move his quest game checks condition “do we received achievement” or not)

2. Hall of Mirrors quest:
here is simple, we need complete Collector quest to be able to complete this one.
Hall of Mirrors check conditions (“do this quests completed”) for: “Nocturne under overpass”, “Extra ticket”, “Ancient One”, “Child’s play”, “News from front”, “Society of Unrest”, “Old Friend”, “Collector” (only Collector cant be completed for now)

3. High society side quest:
here is simple as well, by idea you would get ideal booze (Manifesto distillate) in Gloss (Luster) bar via biography check (tector, jaeger, ordinator) or if you have trade perk. Second option is to buy it from same barman in Gloss (Luster) or from Liquid Sky brothel from barman (he mention that they sell this one). But due to bad naming and broken trigger we dont get those booze in any described means.

4. Random encounters:
this is mess, around in middle of game they always “reset” that will lead to repeating again those encounters, with same scripts and dialogs but those scripts will be broken, so, you can complete them, but will not get in half cases of those stories rewards or correct completion of them. No big deal for now, they do not influence on other quests. Will look what is happening with them later…

Outcome of such process have two moments:

– messed names, different styles in texts, and fragmented blocks of text (part of dialog lines can be in one file and other part in another, even if whole dialog take place in one moment of game).
– game has texts that dating first alpha/beta versions of game that still used and was never formatted or deleted. But in alpha/beta versions period names of NPC, locations, items, quests descriptions was different, that give us such inconsistency today in-game where one NPC can have couple of different names (in dialogs, in mentions, in quest log, etc.), same situation with items, and locations.

So, to standardize all stuff, unified style must be created. Again, I dont add anything that is not in-game, I am studying already existed texts, compare them with official russian translation, and look what was in earlier alpha/beta part of text blocks, then looks for references in other texts to be sure that devs clearly choose this particular name, description, etc.

Here what will be used and what still under question:

and many other NPC (will post their names later) plus in names where I placed “or” its still work in progress, and to be decided.

Unitor, Tector, Captain, General, Commander, Commandant, Commissar, Prime Sergeant, Sergeant, Lieutenant…

For this part I used the rule: https://www.quora.com/Should-military-ranks-be-capitalized , because game has mixed style (like 50/50) for this one.

So for example, if we have cases when:

rank accompanied with person name will be capitalized:
…report to Captain Riebel, …talk to Sergeant Russ, etc.

rank without person name not capitalized:
…general said, …go see captain, etc.

same rule applied to “ranks” in some other professions but not for all:
…speak to Doctor Redden, …tell Doctor Rokh and …doctor opened his bag, etc.

Correct: Prime Sergeant Chikub, Captain Riebel, Colonel Sabra, Doctor Redden, Unitor Sholke
Not correct: Prime-sergeant Chikub, captain Riebel, colonel Sabra, Dr. Redden, doctor Redden

Still under consideration:
Must say double name ranks may be changed later. Game consist different variants, like: Prime-Sergeant as well as Prime Sergeant.
Wikipedia says that in general it will be Prime Sergeant, but depends on what country we speak.

One more interesting case about General Azar. Game mention him as General Azar …but there was news on Steam from devs that was describing organizations and he was written as: Prime-General Azar (which is more correct based on lore), and couple of instances in game of such writing, so still deciding what to use.

Hubs or wast areas with big numbers of citizens in it: Urb, Limb, Near Range …and others:

Correct: Urb, Limb, Near Range, Junkyard…
Not correct: urb, limb, Limba, near range, Near-range, near-range, Near-Range, Junk Yard…

Object 6 has 12 sectors that has letter naming, and those sectors in almost all texts has capitalization: Sector B, Sector H, Sector C, etc., but will not be capitalized if letter of sector not mentioned:

Correct: Sector B, Sector C, Sector H…
Not correct: Sector b, sector C…

Every sector has reservations, checkpoints, zones. Names of those will be capitalized:

Correct: zone H-88, outpost D-101/58, reservation D-106, checkpoint B-27, overpass M-5…
Not correct: Zone H-88, zone d-101/58, Reservation d-106, checkpoint B27…

Shops, bars, etc. (in any part of dialogue line):

Rainbow-106
Second Breath pastry shop (sometimes mentioned as bar) – yeah, its actually called like that (Second Wind is a slang name that was incorrectly used by translators);
Gloss (Luster in-game but actually its called Gloss, but letter “G” are destroyed if we look in-game on shop signboard, and russian version have correct name for this shop, so I think that correct translation was lost due to outsourcing translation without visual reference. Luster and Gloss have similar meaning);
Junk Bazaar – returned original name to Square of Glory trash-market (he was called Trash market in-game, but we can see billboard that says its Junk Bazaar).

Still under consideration:
Rainbow-106 or Rainbow 106 (as in-game model of shop tell us);

People’s Wrath
Bea Kera
Sons of Morakh
Citizen Militia (will do additional checks on names related to them in next version of patch)
Ordinate
Tyrang
Dar-Khala
Committee
Nomah Autonomy
Nomah Hierarchy
SORG Regime
Zerk-Rodd

Omaburger – Ohmaburger, Omburger (alpha/beta);
Sapphire-5 – Sapfir-5 (alpha/beta);

Crawler IV – Crauler IV, Cravler IV (alpha/beta);

somnia and Somnia (same word but in some cases its used as medical condition and not capitalized, and in another case we capitalize it. So its depends on context and who is talking about it)

Correct: [Sergeant looked at you with his tired face.]
Not correct: [Sergeant looked at you with his tired face]. or [Sergeant looked at you with his tired face.]

AP – armor-piercing, INC – incendiary, HM – handmade, ST – standard, CST – canister shot.

So, now all ammo have unified marking:

Correct: INC 7.92 mm cartridges, HM 9 mm cartridges, etc.
Not Correct: 9 mm HM cartridges, st 7.92mm cartridges, etc.

Still under consideration:
what marking use: 10 mm or 10mm

Changed general representation to be more consistent and easy read. Now its:
Diagram: ITEM NAME, Recipe: ITEM NAME

Moving from US grammar to UK grammar (kinda):
1. in US english there no any spaces before and after dash (and its called Em dash) and comma always placed before quotes closed.
2. in UK english there are spaces before and after dash (and its called En dash) and comma placed in general after quotes closed, but also can be inside, its depends how people like it.

Dashes:

Correct: Urb — big city, and here is zone Z-51 — we need to visit it.
Not correct: Urb—big city, and there is zone Z-51—we need to visit it.

Quotes:

Correct: we call it “stuff”, try it.
Not correct: we call it “stuff,” try it.

So, lets start with spaces before and after, and comma after quotes. I am opened to discussion do we leave as it is, or roll back in next versions.

• did you know that you can toggle “walk mode” in-game by pressing “\” key on your keyboard;
• did you know that in Vulture Nest there is quest that involve fixing piano for “man” named Vladek;
• did you know that game has fully implemented dialogs option for female character, and almost half of needed files for model/textures and animations (we was soo close);
• did you know that announced in one of latest patches encounter with little girl and her protector do not work; (based on gialogs and description its must be reference to Bioshock, girl with big eyes and syringe in her hands plus MAS protector);
• did you know that when destroying blue plastic boxes (and barrels but with lower chanse) on locations sometimes after destroying them game will spawn different ammo and grenades for you;
• did you know, that when you type your name in process of creating your hero, you can write your name in correct way with first capitalized letter (even if game shows to you that all letters are capitalized);
• did you know, that earlier versions of game was having more complex system with “upgrading” different non-party NPC and reputation with non-party NPC system to help you on your way of completing main events in story;
• did you know, that in first gameplay iterations game was with top-down view, and later was changed to third person view. This is why we cant look up – there is empty space, no any ceilings;
• to do only text fixes it took for me ~1400 screenshots as visual references……

Here is a list of all items that will be needed in different quests across game:

AI Module, Ball, ECHO-8, Chelicet Egg, White bell (x3), Comics, Cooling system blueprint, (Demon or Baby or Old man) mask, Faces of Inmran, Owl Figurine, MAS Battery, Pride of the Nation Teapot, Sapphire-5, Scale Weights, Sea Glass (x10), Ticket (all available), Voznek’s Microchip, Projector, Rabbit, Translator, Ketorolac (x2), Telephone, Manifest Distillate, Piano pedals, Piano strings, Piano keys, Chocolate, White Bell (x4), Timeless Saga I,

———– THIS SECTION IS STILL WORK IN PROGRESS, AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE ———–